


All's Fair

by monster_baby



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Unhappy Ending, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 07:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15189719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monster_baby/pseuds/monster_baby
Summary: Snippets of John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton through the (modern) Revolutionary War.





	All's Fair

**Author's Note:**

> un-beta'd.

It all starts with the war. (That isn’t true, but Alexander _lies_.) The deaths in Boston and the chains around American trade, they’re both enormous affronts to the sovereignty of the nation, and although his university is always far from the real action, festering instead with heart-pumping protests that draw a permanent redcoat guard to its front steps, he eagerly delves into the belly of the beast. He writes and writes and writes, and when he’s finished with that, he presents. The first time he hops on stage in front of a crowd, and, God, they cheer, he knows he’s found his calling. Alexander drops the pre-med path he’d promised his pastor back somewhere that doesn’t matter and gobbles up the law instead. At his heart he’s an orator, a voracious pursuer of justice, and when their country finally finds its feet again it’ll need lawyers like him. The good kind, not the fucking “I earned my degree over the internet” schmucks swarming the courts now.

 

But it starts with the war. There are more bombings and shootings in the street. Even places like Colombia are riddled with carefully concealed glocks in the hands of twitchy nationalists and traitors alike. People march. People bleed in the streets and piss themselves when redcoats come knocking on their doors. Eventually the university closes, which is infuriating, dropping him mid-degree, but what happens, happens. Thinking back on it now, it was probably for the best. It had granted him years of political networking and tacked the honor of a military tour onto his jam-packed resume. More than anything, though, it sets him near enough the frontlines to really decide whether that scratchy voice lurking at the base of his skull holds any credence. Should he kill himself? Snatch the nearest gun and burst onto the battlefield with his half-finished bachelor’s degree like the piece of shit failure-- can’t even earn his degree, can’t even get a job, gonna be sent back home if he isn’t fucking careful-- he is? That’s certainly the question. That’s the dilemma. Mr. Hamilton would like to formally express his gratitude that the demons writhing in his chest like thick, fat slugs are so vocal.

 

*

 

John Laurens is no virgin, but he keens like an untouched bride beneath Alexander’s dirty hands when they fuck. The war makes them like this, cakes them in filth and mud and blood and sweat. This summer reprieve is only a reprieve in that the collective camp isn’t freezing their dicks off in sub-zero temperatures, and that the sticky humidity offers him opportunity to lick the salt from John’s neck. Their closet of a room is pitch black and humid enough to drown in, but it’s the first time they’ve been separated from the other aides in weeks, months, a millennia. Cicadas screech outside their thin window. It drowns out their ragged breaths and John’s staccato moans with-- each-- thrust-- of-- Alexander’s-- cock between his closed thighs. There’s no such thing as the luxury of lube these days, but spit and sweat slick the way, and John just eats the friction right up.

 

Tomorrow John’ll be raw and sore, fingers tenderly rubbing over the red patches on the soft meat of his inner thighs. No ointment or lotion, only the constant reminder of toe-curling pleasure. That shouldn’t be hot. How the fuck is that so fucking hot? The bruises? The bites? Alexander yanks John back by the hips and grinds forward, and he can feel how tight John’s soft sack is drawn up against his body. Gonna come, _gonna make you come all over yourself, Jacky, nothing but my fat cock between your legs. Not even getting fucked, and you’re still begging for more like the come-hungry whore you are. You wanna feel this tomorrow, don’t you? You want it to hurt? Such a fucking slut for it. God, God, oh, Jack--_

 

*

 

There is no lube and there is no ointment for the skin burns, but Alexander is not in the business of being refused what he wants. When John rises groggily at the ass-crack of dawn, Alexander pushes him gently down by the shoulder and kisses his forehead. Kisses both his cheeks. Grins against John’s chapped lips when John groans impatiently and pulls him where they both want. The cracked window does nothing to vent the room. Pushing John’s sweaty legs apart to the dulcet tone of some soft, grumbled protest, Alexander brandishes the mostly empty tube of lotion he’d wheedled from the clinic and squeezes what he can onto his hands. John hisses when Alexander rubs the cream on his skin, breathing picking up. Better, he’s half-hard when Alexander drops a final kiss to his knee and stumbles away to dress for the day. It’s a pretty picture to carry him through the mundanity of paperwork. After all, they’ll spend the next two night in this room, only them.

 

*

 

Alexander laves his tongue over the bruises and cuts mottling John’s knuckles. Tastes like blood and dirt. The hand flinches back when teeth scrape its sensitive skin and he grins.

 

*

 

The shock of the cold pierces Alexander’s chest, hand snapping out to grab for the ledge and missing, missing by just an inch, before he’s plunged into the river’s breakneck current. Swimming isn’t the issue. He knows how to find his arms and legs in water after years spent dodging the kids who’d hold him beneath the ocean’s warm surface, but the moment he breaches its top with a gasp he’s already being dragged further downstream. Suddenly he’s back in the storm, caught with dirty water in his lungs, rains and winds whipping like BB gun pellets against his skin until his arms and face are covered in welts, drowning and drowning and choking down air around the hunk of stone crushing down on his chest, and he _can’t breathe, can’t breathe, please--_

 

Begging directed at whom, precisely? God? After everything, after all Alexander has known and done and learned, his animal-brain flicks desperately back to the invisible, magical creature living within the clouds? It’s sad. Even in the moment he feels a pang of something that might’ve been chagrin if he’d had time to stop and think about what was happening, but there is no time for introspection when he catches on the river’s ice and crawls on shaking hands and knees to shore. His skin is pale and blue, teeth chattering, body panting and trembling as he casts around for his bearings. There is no feeling in his feet when he finds his legs. The ache of cold and bitter winter fade into clumsy numbness that make the stumble back towards camp all the more pathetic. Mostly, it’s a blur. Hands touching him, people hovering overhead.

 

Sound, movement, darkness.

 

John sits at his bedside, hands clasped between his parted knees.

 

The recognition-- it’s John, his Jacky, his Laurens-- creeps upon Alexander before he realizes he’s even conscious. His body aches and tingles with pinprick needles and full-out throbbing, but it’s better than the nothingness from before. He curls and uncurls his finger and toes to make sure they’re all present and accounted for without lifting his head. The back of John’s hand touches against Alexander’s forehead and slides down his stubbled cheek, so cold, contrast sharp enough that he shivers and tries to flinch away.

 

“Got a fever, baby girl,” John whispers. His voice sounds like smoke.

 

Blackness follows on its coattails.

 

*

 

The cause is dying. Alexander doesn’t dare speak the words aloud, but he sees it in the General’s weary eyes and the deserters’ selfish retreats and the dwindling stocks of munitions and rations. The first winter went over like absolute shit, but this one, men and women literally freezing their fucking limbs off, strikes the Army right in its heart, a spear to the chest. He petitions for money and supplies until his fingers cramp and throat runs dry-- quite the feat, if he says so himself. Even John, the President’s golden son, has little sway on the tight pockets of Congress. That doesn’t stop them from working until their eyes droop shut and their heads thunk down onto their desks. It doesn’t stop the flurry of pleas and negotiations between America and the French, nor does it keep the aides from clutching Washington’s pant legs when news of the Conway Cabal hit the innermost circles. Stubborn fucks, all of them, and Alexander’s including himself as well because as often as he disagrees with His Excellency’s tactics, the morale of their country rides upon a cohesive military front.

 

Cut off, or indeed replace, the head, and the beast dies. It stands true for both sides.

 

*

 

“I love you,” Alexander breathes. His mouth stinks like John’s bitter come. “God, I love you more than anything in the world. I love you so much.”

 

*

 

The wooden bed frame creaks and thunks against the floral papered wall.

 

“It’s favoritism.” Alexander scratches at his belly and watches John’s civvies join his own on the carpet. “Maybe even nepotism.”

 

That earns him a smug look, and although John doesn’t fall onto the bed quite as heavily, the headboard clacks against the plaster again when he sprawls along its foot. “You’re so fuckin’ full of it, Alex. My daddy didn’t have anything to do with this, but if it soothes your ego any, I suppose you could say it’s because you’re less dispensable.”

 

“If anything, I’m _more_ dispensable. You don’t understand--”

 

John laughs, sharp and abrupt, and pushes onto his elbows. “I don’t understand? Really? You gonna go down that road with me?”

 

They could. That would be another fight, another line of mottled bruises down Alexander’s ribs and smeared come drying on his hands, but for the first time in a long time they’re in a bed. Hell, they’re sharing a bed, no prying ears and eyes nestled in the crack of their door. He flops an arm over his eyes and huffs shortly instead; needs to de-escalate the situation himself because Christ knows that John can never back down from anything even if his life depends on it, hot-headed rich boy that he is. It isn’t something they speak often about, Alexander incredibly touchy about class separation and John harmlessly ignorant in the way he throws money around, but it’s there. Hovering. Omnipresent. Deep down-- hell, even just beneath the surface, Alexander knows the General hasn’t given John this command for money or loyalty to the President. He just… needs something to latch his teeth onto. They both do. They all do. And it leads to the _best_ sex.

 

There’s sex, there’s good sex, and then there’s furious, biting, scratching, welt-raising hate sex, and no one understands how fucking lucky Alexander is that he can have all three with the same person; that he can hate John superficially enough to grind a gut-wrenching orgasm from their too-skinny bodies and bask in how much, how unbelievably, unspeakably, much he loves this man. With every fibre of his being, every inch of his soul, every breath in his chest. God, oh, God, he loves.

 

Alexander doesn’t need to open his eyes to feel the way John deflates and crawls up the bed. The frame jostles as he moves. Then, like a dead weight, he collapses on Alexander’s free arm and sends the head board thwacking against the wall.

 

“God--” Alexander punches John on the back. They’ll wake the entire bed and breakfast at this rate, and there’s probably a fee for disturbing the other guests with wall-slamming sex.

 

“Baby, why you hurt me like this?” John’s face is mashed, muffled, against the quilt.

 

“Well, you’re putting my whole arm to sleep, asshole. Get off.” Half-jerking his arm out from beneath the weight, Alexander touches beneath John’s chest until he can find a nipple and _yanks_.

 

John shrieks and smacks the hand away, back against the headboard and banging it hard on the wall. The neighbors are going to murder them, just straight up slaughter them, by the end of tonight. He cups his peck gingerly through his shirt and hisses, “Fucker. What the fuck, Alex? Fuck.”

 

*

 

As it turns out, somewhere across the distant sea there is a Mrs. John Laurens and daughter. Isn’t that something? Isn’t that _fucking_ something?

 

*

 

There’s no pomp and circumstance in John’s death. Shot once in the leg, once in the chest. His body is looted and left strewn amongst the other broiling, nameless corpses in the hot South Carolina sun.

 

His last thoughts are not of Alexander.

 

He rots.


End file.
